


The Best Years Of Our Lives

by xziris



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff, Let Wash be silly, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28318110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xziris/pseuds/xziris
Summary: All Wash said he wanted was a calm, and normal retirement. Of course, sharing that retirement with Sarge would negate every notion of peacefulness.
Relationships: Sarge/Agent Washington (Red vs. Blue)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	The Best Years Of Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sxpaiscia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxpaiscia/gifts).



Light leaked in past the shutters, a hazel glow of a new day. In the morning breeze, the lemon tree they’d planted started to rustle, its branches caressing their second floor bedroom window. Maybe one day, many years after they’d planted it, it would actually bare fruit. They wanted to make lemonade, because they seemed to be the only ones they knew who knew that lemonade was not sprite. It was an elaborate scheme to prove their family wrong, but what wasn’t in their lives?

Washington stretched a bit in bed, rolling over to face away from the light. He hadn’t opened his eyes, instead basking in the peace of late morning. He’d not experienced it a lot in his life, the ability to rest until the afternoon, the serenity of simply being. He snuggled under the covers, red as his eyes used to be, allowing the nature beyond their house to lull him back into sleep. His hand outstretched to his partner, to find him sleeping just as sound, only to feel the warm fur of their cat.

Duke Tobias Lancelot Windsor The Third, affectionately known as Bastard, was technically only Wash’s cat. His partner apparently didn’t want him, but took great pleasure in naming him, and also in taking care of him. In the dusky light of their room, Wash smiled, lazily running his hand down Duke’s back. His fingers lingered a bit too long before shutting his eyes again and nuzzling further into his pillow.

Retirement, actual retirement this time, was blissful. No more adventures, no more fighting, no more sleepless nights. Well, actually, they had plenty of them. All of them did. Sometimes, his partner would get calls from Simmons or Donut in the dead of the night as they daren’t wake their housemates, sobbing down the phone about things his partner refused to relay. Tucker did the same things with Wash. They all had to be there for one another, goodness knows they all needed it.

Though, if anybody thought retirement was the end of the Reds and Blues’ shenanigans, they’d be painfully wrong. Wash wanted a life where he could read from twelve while eleven, breaking only for food or a walk in the local field. Almost everybody else wanted weekend visits that lasted three weeks, and group holidays that popped up every three months. He loved them, they were family, but he just wanted to grow old quietly and peacefully. He mainly got it, but there was one major issue that interrupted his entire plan: his unfortunate taste in men.

As if on cue, there was a loud bang from downstairs that caused Wash’s eyes to shoot open. Duke jumped out of his own skin, leaping off the bed and scurrying away. Damnit. Wash groaned, running a palm down his face, trying his hardest to ward off an overwhelmingly loving smile. He rolled back over to urge himself out to bed to investigate. He slipped his legs over the edge of his bed, slid his feet into his bunny slippers, and groaned again.

He caught sight of the picture on his bedside table, a framed selfie that Tucker took when his partner grabbed him and dipped him - their first kiss. It was blurry, hard to make them out, but everyone had a copy. Tucker made sure of that. He laughed to himself a little, but yet another disconcerting noise snapped him back to the disturbingly normal reality of his ‘retirement’.

Rolling his back and cracking his ageing joints, Wash made his way over to their door, opening it and steeping aside for Duke to run away and hide from the noise. The second he stepped into their hallway, the distinct smell of smoke hit his nose. He passed the two spare bedrooms to get to the stairs, and plodded down them. The closer he got to what he knew was the kitchen, the louder a whir sounded. It was pushing against the banging of something mechanical, and Wash just wondered what household appliance was being mutilated this morning.

“Wash! There you are! Come look!” Sarge’s voice called out somewhere the moment Wash approached their small kitchen. It was separated from the living room (which had turned an awful shade of black) by a counter, a breakfast bar he believed it was called, which was decorated by faux flowers and a bunch of knickknacks from their many, many group holidays.

“Sarge, why is the living room covered in soot?” Wash asked. Sarge’s head popped up over the breakfast bar, equally coated in residue from his morning activities. His grin was more visible than ever, though, his yellowing teeth wonky and in need of serious maintenance.

“Aha! I knew you’d ask that. Well, let me introduce you to...” Sarge delved back down to emerge once more with a mangled device decorated red with white flowers. He slammed it on the bar and swivelled it around so Wash could get a better look at it.

“That’s our toaster.”

“Not anymore! It’s my new state of the arc defence mechanism against the Blues, when they come over next week for our New Years party!”

“Sarge, sweetheart, I’m a Blue.”

“I keep telling you I promoted you to honorary Red years ago! Now let me show you what he can do!”

Wash shook his head, put a hand on his hip, then gestured to the defence mechanism with his spare one. Sarge turned the dial that was supposed to be for the toaster’s timer, stood back, and stared at his creation. He could’ve sworn he heard a quiet “go on, boy” from his partner, once more having to flatten the smile that begged to etch on his lips. Both of them blinked a few times before Sarge came out of the kitchen to get a better look at it.

Sarge hadn’t even had the bright idea to change out of his pyjamas. When his back faced Wash, he recognised the clean side of his shirt as his own, hugging a bit too tight. The sweats were either the UNSC issued ones, or ones he bought to annoy Wash on their shopping trips, as they were extraordinarily red. He didn’t know how Sarge managed to find the most red item no matter where they went, it was a skill he both admired and loathed. It meant their otherwise calming, quaint house was filled with the most luminescent eyesores he could get his hands on. Wash was once tempted to get back at him with something blue, but he preferred a hard to look at home than no roof over his head.

He walked backwards towards Wash, whatever was faulty must have been fixed, and stood next to him with vigour. Their hands automatically found each other, squeezing tightly the second their fingers interlaced. Both of their palms were rough, calloused from equally long time in their field of work. Sarge’s was far too warm, almost alighting a fire against Wash’s permanently cold one. It worked for them.

“Wait for it...” Sarge mumbled.

“I’ve been waiting, Sarge,” Wash mumbled right back.

“That’s no way to talk to a senior officer.”

“We’re both out of duty,” Wash said but refused to leave it anyway, “plus, I was a Freelancer. That outranks you.”

“That’s not an officially recognised rank!”

“It is!”

“Not in the US army!”

“Neither of us were a part of the US army! There hasn’t been a US army in decades! We’re literally UNSC!”

“Aha! I got you again, Agent Washington. You can’t spell UNSC without US!”

“That’s because-“

Their petty banter was interrupted by another loud bang, and another cloud of smoke alongside other various particles. Both of them squeezed their eyes shut as a layer of debris and other miscellaneous parts of their poor toaster came at them, shielding themselves with the hand that wasn’t grasping ahold of the other. Even if Sarge tried to pull away, Wash doubted he’d let him. The latest anti Blue device spluttered one last dying breath before it audibly started to spark.

Sarge saw this as progression, of course, and quickly shook the new layer of dust from his hair. He tugged Wash over to his newest invention, the corpse of their toaster, and poked it with a screwdriver he’d pulled out of his sweats’ waistband. Which was really, really dumb because Wash knew those trousers had pockets - he’d worn them plenty. He waited patiently for Sarge to declare it shot, as he always did, so they could get to the part where they cleaned up and continued their day.

Instead, Sarge hollered and began to incoherently ramble about adding turrets to it, pausing sometimes to ask Wash what he thought. Wash honestly couldn’t catch a word of what his partner was talking about, but the passion that sparked in his eyes distracted him from even pretending to understand. He pulled his hand away to gesture wildly. The light that grew with every change of sentence, every time he went more in-depth with his plans that were so obscure that these moments were the only time he’d wished he did land himself on Red team.

Just to understand this, the times he looked the most happiest. Whatever cogs clashed against each other in his beautifully explosive brain, finding solutions to problems he’d made up entirely. Infatuating, truly, how not even someone who trained alongside Wash would be able to concoct the miracles that Sarge does with his significantly more limited equipment and sheer will. He tapped on the mechanism with the point of the screwdriver.

By height alone, Sarge looked as though he was constructing a blender from the toaster parts, and Wash hoped he wasn’t going go dismantle their brand new blender (they bought it last week after Sarge tried to weaponise the front door again). It was back in its original form, not the toaster one, and ready to try again.

“What’s this actually supposed to do?” Wash asked, squeezing the hand that worked it’s way back into his own.

“I told you! Fend against Blues! Watch and learn, Wash!” Sarge said, prompting his machine to buzz to life.

Life was a strong word. It rattled, whirring again. Then, like it did moments ago, it died out in a loud huff of soot and smoke. Wash sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his spare hand. Their living room was one more invention off being entirely unrecoverable. Beside him, Sarge started coughing out what had collected in the back of his throat, doing what Wash was about five minutes away from mimicking.

“Get the dusters out, please,” Wash said. Sarge audibly rolled his eyes, making his way to the garage where they kept a mirage of cleaning equipment. They probably cleaned their house more than anybody else in the universe, and they’ve become damn good at it, too.

Wash stepped towards the mechanism again, it was still smoking at odd parts. He wasn’t even quiet sure the shape Sarge was intending by it. He jabbed his pointer finger at the part that was sparking the worst. He tilted his head to the side to try and find an outline in his mind, where the turrets would supposedly be fixed to, how this was actually supposed to ward of those ‘dirty Blues’ unless it’s only purpose as to simply cover the offending team in it’s own failings.

He stepped away from the breakfast bar, trying to brush his shirt down, into the rest of the kitchen. On the tiled floor that used to be a lovely eggshell, was a discarded toolkit. The handles of everything there used to be another colour too, they were black. But because of Tex, that was Blue, so they spent a weekend painting them another colour. Mainly, they tried to paint each other’s face red, splattering the colour from their brushes to their faces, then taking a shower to clean it all down.

Kneeling down to get a better look at the equipment Sarge had left, Wash quickly documented it all in his head in order to check that there wasn’t anything missing. If, say, Sarge was hiding the creation of yet another robot. There were various screwdrivers, spanners, nails, screws, zip ties, a pistol, a grenade... and a schematic for a ‘shrink ray’. Wash went to pick it up, the final design was scribbled in with red marker, worryingly with white space that looked like the flower pattern on their toaster.

That was enough of that, he looked at it too enamoured, and had to put on a stern face. It was early! Sarge woke him up. He wasn’t going to give it up, even if every little thing that his partner did cause a smile to try and claw its way upon his lips. He stepped up and walked away, he needed a drink. His mouth itched with some dust or soot, he’d better get it cleaned out.

He walked towards the sink before remembering last week. That faucet was recently boobytrapped the night before the Reds came round for their biweekly team meetings. The only person who wasn’t aware of the trap was Grif, which kind of backfired on Sarge because not once had Wash heard him say, “no thanks, Wash, I don’t want some Carling, I’ll have a nice and refreshing glass of water,” nor did he think Sarge had. When the tap didn’t spray Grif with a stream of water, and after Sarge got out of his woeful state at his failed plan, he refused to fix it.

Save it for Tucker, he’d said. Wash couldn’t talk him out of it, and to be fair he didn’t really try. He opened their fridge door, ducked so that the miniature punching glove couldn’t sock him in the forehead, and pulled out the big bottle of water from the bottom. He slapped it on the side and pulled out the only cups they had: those plastic ones all in various shades of red.

“Wash! I’m back!” Sarge called from the living room as Wash had just finished pouring his drink. He took a small sip, and turned around to face him. He held up a feather duster and pointed to their vacuum cleaner. Wash chugged the rest of the water, slammed the cup down by the sink then made his way back over to the living room.

“Thank you, Sarge.”

“You’re welcome, sweet cheeks.”

Wash took the duster off of Sarge, kicked off his slippers, then climbed onto their sofa to reach the corners of the room. He held his breath as he collected the rubble in the duster, stroking it between where the ceiling and the wall connected. It was their feature wall, a light grey cityscape wallpaper that they’d picked out together one long shopping trip. Their downstairs was as neutral as the colour scheme got, really. Both their guest bedrooms were horridly red or ridiculously blue (Wash had to set that one up as Sarge refused).

Behind him, the hoover started up, and their usual second activity of the day officially began. They worked in silence, not needing to say anything to each other. Wash uncovered the usual odd stains on the ceiling, ones that Sarge was adamant he had no hand in creating.

He moved down to the picture frame on the wall behind the settee, the lovely landscape of everybody. Their entire family, as it stood. Bar Lopez, but they needed a camera man, and Caboose said he looked like he didn’t want to be involved. Wash thought that was bull, because Lopez doesn’t have a face, but who was he to deny Caboose’s ever odd connection with machines? Sarge was pretty upset about not having his favourite creation under his arm, which in turn turned Simmons sour, so both of them looked dead behind the eyes in the photo.

In fact, the only people who didn’t look at least mildly annoyed were Doc and Donut, because they suggested it in the first place. They wanted photos to decorate their home with, having to battle their housemates to let that happen. Their house was a tip, not just because Grif lived there, but because of all their clashing styles. In fact, so was Tucker and Sister’s. As well as Caboose and Carolina’s apartment. Sarge and Wash won on that frontier. Yet another battle conquered.

He’d just uncovered Caboose from the photo when he was suddenly aware of the lack of hoover noise. He slowly turned around to see Sarge grinning wildly, holding an all too familiar device. A gun with a far too wide muzzle. Wash’s eyes flickered between the gun and Sarge’s malicious expression. He swallowed a bit too loudly.

“Sarge...”

“What?” He asked, too innocently. He pointed it up to the part of the ceiling across the room from Wash. They stood in a stand still, Wash knowing no matter what he did, he would pull the trigger. He took a slight step forward, to lower his foot off the sofa, when the familiar blow went off.

Reverse engineering the vacuum’s smaller extensions, they made a gun that sent up a large blow of air. It was an ingenious idea of Sarge’s, to send the inevitable collateral damage he’d create to one space to make it easier to wipe up. However, right now, all it did was erase Wash’s work. It sent everything right to his side of the room, and his arm hurt a bit now, he really didn’t want to redo it all. They both stared at the photo, everybody was hidden behind a layer of dust again.

“I was gonna get on to that side!” Wash was trying not to laugh. Or cry.

“I just hurried it along!” Sarge wasn’t hiding his childlike glee.

“I’d just finished it!”

“Here, let me help you!”

Before Wash could object, Sarge aimed the gun right at the wall behind him. In under a second from that action, he pressed the trigger again, sending a large wave of air right towards him. In theory, it was a terrible plan. In action, all it did was clear the soot off of Wash’s front and splatter it on to the wall and the backrest of the sofa.

The sudden impact sent his face into a bit of a numb shock, his hair was stuck on ends. His beard was pressed against his neck, scratchy and uncomfortable - more than it ever had been. Using the hand not closed around the feather duster to ruffle the volume back into his hair, Wash glared down Sarge without a trace of tangible malice. He went on to fix his beard after he was happy with what he thought his hair looked like.

“That’s it,” Wash said pointing the feather duster towards Sarge, “it’s on.”

“Uh oh!”

Wash leapt off of the sofa brandishing his feathery baton, waving it vaguely in Sarge’s direction. His partner shot another blow of air his way before heading off in a barely jogging run. Wash ducked out of the way, rolled out of the way in fact, just to prove to himself he still got it. He got back to his feet and scanned the living room and kitchen for any hint of him.

He chased him into the kitchen, threateningly trying to dust Sarge down, as he shot at him with the air blower. He swung around into the kitchen, but Sarge had managed to duck out of the way and used turn around of Wash’s pivot as a chance to escape. Wash couldn’t suppress the smile any longer, laughing wildly as he trailed Sarge with his duster.

They went around the living room a few times, the air from Sarge’s gun knocking over a few miscellaneous decorations. Nothing broke however. The silence of their work had changed into laughter that was too awake for this time of day, and vague cries of intimidation.

Sarge landed another blow directly on Wash’s face, who stopped in his tracks to shake his head to fix his facial and head hair. There was a triumphant laugh and a call of, “thats two down for you, you only have one life left!” It was followed by the unmistakable sound of Sarge running up the stairs to hide in one of three places to get the jump on Wash.

When Wash finally recovered, he shook his feather duster as if it would recharge it, as if it was one of those shock batons from the Project. He stalked up the stairs, unnerved by the sudden lull. He tiptoed down to the bathroom first, because it was the furthest away from the stairs. He assumed Sarge would be hiding in the shower ready to leap out and fire his air blower once more.

However, the door was open, and Sarge wouldn’t make that rookie mistake. He walked in still, looking around to find their cat curled up on the toilet seat. Bastard, Wash smiled as he bent down to give Duke a scratch on the head. He needed to wear Sarge down enough to let him get another, because every kid needs a sibling. He kissed the cat before snapping back to his feet and leaving to the Red guest room.

He elbowed open the door to find it empty. All that remained of another person was someone’s forgotten UNSC issued red uniform folded neatly on the end of the bed. Though... Wash swung open the closet door with a wild grin. Nothing. He looked down, just to make sure Sarge hadn’t crammed himself into an awkward position to get the ultimate drop on Wash. All he found was a half collapsed cardboard box that looked as though it had been opened and taped up again a dozen times.

He backtracked to the upper floor landing. He grabbed his feather duster with both hands, Wash knew all about ambushes. Back to where it all began, their bedroom. The door wasn’t closed the entire way, he opened it by pressing his hip against it. He dared not let his hands off of his weapon.

Empty. Wash knew too well to check the Blue guest room, so there were two explanations. Their closet, but that thing creaked like a madman. All that was left was the en suite. Grasping tighter to his duster, Wash steadied himself for when Sarge flew out of the door to tackle him.

When he did, just on cue again, both the duster and the gun fell out of their hands. Sarge had Wash pinned down on their bed, something that made them lose concentration. They stared at each other for a few minutes, gazing into those wonderfully dark green eyes. They were the colour of a new spring, the start of something new and beautiful, fresh and young. Alive with excitement.

He almost forgot about their battle, but Wash would never let that stop him. His hand groped around their bed sheet to try and grab the duster back. He maintained eye contact with Sarge, both of them giggling like little kids as they desperately fished around for their weapon of choice. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the duster disappeared into the void. Sarge managed to grab the air blower, but as he clicked it in Wash’s direction, the puff of air was weak.

“Another win for Red team!”

“I thought I was an honorary Red?”

“Not right now!”

“You’re mad.”

“So are you.”

Wash threw his arms around Sarge’s neck, because they were there and might as well. Their kiss was sweet, short. A peck on the lips, then back to staring at each other with utter admiration. Sarge’s smile was small, but his eyes embodied it more than his lips. Wash traced the grin lines on his cheeks with his eyes before pulling him back in to kiss him some more. He only just realised how tired he’d made himself, and wow he was old now. He guessed that came with retirement.

They broke apart for a few moments, to crawl up to rest their heads on their pillows, but Wash didn’t really wanna do that. Sarge collapsed on his side of the bed with a loud grunt, then Wash collapsed on Sarge with a glorious grin. He curled up against him, thankful that he was the one person who wouldn’t encourage Wash to live a boring, book-filled life after finally getting time off. Thankful that he was allowed to be so silly, so dumb, so full of life again without fear of any judgement.

With Sarge, Wash could let it all go. There was nobody to lead, no army to command, just pure stupidity with someone who he truly loved. Someone who was so strong in all the most useless ways, but that just made him invincible in the ways that mattered most. He laid his head on Sarge’s collarbone, sighing at the arms that wrapped around him. Oh how dull life would be if he didn’t buy into their shenanigans.

“I love you,” Wash said, getting his morning in bed in the dumbest way possible.

“I love you more!”

“Now that’s a fight I will win, there’s no use even trying.”

“On contrary, I think I love you the most. And I’ll prove it!”

“Alright, alright,” Wash said with a happy exhale, “two nil to Sarge.”

He tilted his head up to press another kiss to Sarge’s lips, who didn’t seem at all that intent on stopping him. Then another kiss. And another. But then, he snuggled up closer to Sarge and rested his cheek on his chest. He wasn’t even all that bothered about the thin leftover of dust that he didn’t shake from running all over their house.

“So, Agent Washington,” Sarge began, “any plans for today?”

“Well, I did have an idea. You know how we bought those party poppers for next week? And how we separated them by colour?”

“Yes! There’s no way I will be celebrating New Years with blue confetti!”

“Right, right. Well, how about we mess with ‘Lina’s... maybe Caboose and Tucker’s, too?”

“I love it! Oh, and Grif’s!”

“Yes, okay, and Grif’s.”

There was a whoop, so Wash assumed that was a resounding yes. The arms around him squeezed tighter, and the rambling of a plan picked up again. And as his eyes shut closed just to focus all senses on the beautiful sound, he could only smile that he’d lost yet another fight against Sarge. That this life with Sarge, outlandish schemes and all, was better than anything he could’ve ever imagined on his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, everybody! Have a wonderful time, no matter what you celebrate! And to my Secret Santa giftee, sxpaiscia, I hope you enjoy! This was so much fun to write, thank you sm for the prompt!


End file.
